I was honored to be chosen to do the poster art for Astoria Sunday Market this year.  People are familiar with my coffee art, especially Mona Latte, since a local restaurant bought a large framed print.  I figured I should do something with coffee, but an all-brown poster might not be colorful enough.  So it was back to my roots with watercolor for a combination coffee/color painting.  Here’s the almost done Market Mona; I’m looking forward to seeing the finished poster when the market folks put it all together.

There’s a western theme going around- I was commissioned to paint someone’s friend on a cattle drive in Oklahoma, and an Astorian’s beautiful horses.  And here they are:

I just returned from a whirlwind trip to Dubai, United Arab Emirates.  I was invited to the Middle East Coffee&Tea Convention, to share my art and paint some prizes for the barista championship. Here I am lugging my tradeshow booth stuff past the world’s tallest building.

Dubai is a city of skyscrapers, impossible but real islands shaped like palm trees, indoor ski resorts, deserts, horse and camel races, excellent food and more giant malls than any place needs. Here are some highlights: Read on…

Vintage Beer Poster

Beer Nouveau

San Diego Beer Fair, here I come!  On September 24th, I’ll be painting live on behalf of Arts ‘n Drafts, Read on…

I often get asked to do portraits from photographs and never see the people in ‘real life’. Recently, I got to meet this couple in person when they picked up their completed portrait. It was fun to see how the kindness I saw in their eyes while painting them was truly present when we met.

Please email me at coffeepainter@gmail.com if you would like to commission something.  It’s not too early to plan for the holidays!

People often ask if I paint using mediums other than coffee.  Yes, though not as often.  I started out as a colored pencil and watercolor artist, then got into oils a bit.  About 3 years into my coffeepainting journey, an interior decorator hired me to paint oils for an Oklahoma restaurant called Rib Crib.  The subject matter was quite different from my usual classic masterpieces- this time it was cowboys and old west themes.  We quite a few of these restaurants together throughout the Southwest, and now it looks like we’re at it again.  This job has to be done in 2 weeks!  Here’s a bad phone-pic of yesterday’s work.

This store will be in McAlester, OK.  The founder of the town, J.J. McAlester, is one of the characters in True Grit, interestingly.  Now the town is where the state prison is, and they have a prison rodeo!  So one picture shows that, and we’ll have a train scene, and J.J.’s old storefront.  Yeehaw!

Sometimes I still do oil paintings, and I really enjoy the chance to use more than one color in a painting! Here’s a painting commissioned by my brother.

Another successful test for Curb Media- this time it’s all Guinness.  Looks remarkably like coffee, doesn’t it?

And here’s my family crest:

Yum, I got to paint with chocolate as a test for Curb Media.  Cadbury’s had a successful commercial involving this gorilla, so here he is made entirely from chocolate!  More chocolate paintings to come, for sure.

And here’s a little video of the work in progress:

I had drawn the gorilla using a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and then painted him in with sauce.  Definitely a project in which I sampled the paint throughout!

I’m doing some painting tests for a company in England called Curb. Here’s mud!